In order to get the most from your Solar Panel’s it is neccesary to reposition them throughout the day in order to maximise the amount of sunlight they are exposed to. Ideally you want to automate this process….
Gary Rey’s www.builditsolar.com has detailed their construction of a DIY Solar Panel Sun Tracker. It uses an old bed frame, satellite dish actuator and a pickle jar. The brains of the tracker is the ingenious Redrok LED Tracker which uses LED’s to track the position of the sun and sent positioning data to the satellite dish actuator. End result is a Solar Panel that tracks the sun throughout the day, maximising energy created! He noticed a 20% gain using 160w Solar Panels. Great project for powering a garage or a shed….. Read the full article by following this link
Here’s another DIY Solar Panel Sun Tracker built using the Redrok LED Tracker, but this time a giant scale! And if anyone was interested in just how much money these DIY version can save you over the commercial off-the-shelf versions then check out this link
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11:41 am on April 27th, 2008
Good article, can’t wait for more
Solar power seems to be the future for us, might as well swot up on it while before the rush!
12:08 pm on April 27th, 2008
I second that, wicked article - Just What I was looking for. I followed the plans on the Redrok LED Tracker which were really simple. I have mine built in less than a day and with less than £50 in parts - winner!
2:26 pm on April 27th, 2008
Crazy, never new how simple a sun tracker could be. Wonder if I could use a similar design for tracking satellites? Something I should look into